[Sigia-l] IA Practice Maturation

[eric mahleb]

I knew there was a certain risk in generalizing about
the state of IA and Usability in continental Europe.

Of course, there are agencies and companies out there
that have been practicing and recognizing the benefits
of IA for some time. Of course Europeans come out with
very good user centered websites.

If anyone took my mails as saying that we live in the
stone age over here, please accept my apologies. I
have met plenty of capable people and seen the work of
several forward thinking companies (such as Satama...)
whose work prove that these people's knowledge is
equal to that of their US counterparts.

However, i do maintain that this is a minority and
that in most cases, the visibility and recognition of
IA and Usability is where it was at in the US 2 years
ago. For every agency that knows and practices IA and
Usability, there are at least 5 who have no idea about
it or do not want to invest in it. And a lot of the
bigger sites with high visibility are built by
pan-European agencies or by the branches of US
companies.

cheers
eric

--- Ziya Oz <ZiyaOz at earthlink.net> wrote:
> "eric mahleb" wrote:
> 
> > it seems like we all agree on the fact that
> > continental Europe is lagging behind.
> 
> It seems to me that people who have complained about
> Europe lagging haven't
> really explained if this was lagging in terms of
> buzzword compliance or
> actual results.
> 
> I don't particularly frequent Euro sites, but I
> don't have the impression
> that they are noticeably and significantly worse
> than their American
> counterparts. I'm sure there are counter examples
> and I'd love to see two
> comparable sites that may illustrate the point.
> 
> Someone complained about top-down German design.
> Fair enough. But German
> (industrial) design, for example, was the envy of
> the world not so long ago.
> Similarly, the fact that Europeans largely missed
> our colossal dot.com
> implosion may be viewed as either lagging or being
> smarter. A lot of the
> stuff that were 'practiced' in the U.S. for the past
> three years in the name
> of progress and cutting-edge leadership now look
> pretty silly.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Ziya
> 
> Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare
> Marriott, June 28 - 30.
> See http://www.asis.org/CM
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